Isis bursts into the histo-lab, her three arms thrashing about like a crazed puppet on a string. ‘He’s at it again! Sacked half the workforce of Compound 33 today. Our turn next, for sure.’
I look up from the research I’m doing on art forms as political satire from Honoré Daumier to George Grosz. I must try to calm down my young assistant. She’s just returned from the compu-centre where rumour is rife and panic spreads like the plague.
‘And guess what?’ she wails. ‘His name is Ra. How pretentious is that?’
I put my docus on one side with an inward sigh. ‘In point of fact, it’s an appropriate name for the new CEO of World-wideculture. The God Ra is traditionally identified with the mid-day sun, the generator of light, growth and creativity.’
Isis pulls a face. ‘Thinks he’s God all right, but if you ask me he’s keener on destroying than creating.’
‘We mustn’t judge him too quickly, Isis. Time will tell.’
‘We may not have much time. The compounds he’s already visited reckon he’s a monster, a devil, a mutant.’
‘The last comment is redundant,’ I remind her. ‘We’re all mutants.’
She rolls her pupils upward until the whites of her eyes illuminate her moonface. ‘Whatever,’ she says, and trips her way over to the caffeine dispenser. That’s the tenth tab she’s taken this morning. Since we’ve had our own dispenser in the histo-lab it’s all too easy for her to help herself. No wonder she’s so hyped up.
‘We may consider ourselves normal,’ I explain for the umpteenth time, ‘but none of us are.’
I flick through some old photographs on my compu to remind Isis of the way humanoids used to look. Not that they all looked the same, but the distinctions between them were subtle. Everyone had one head, two eyes, a nose and a mouth, two legs and two arms, a measure of normality that we can never be sure of nowadays. Not that many humanoids – mutant or otherwise – have been born for years. As far as I know.
I consider myself fortunate to have been born with only one head and tell Isis she should be grateful to have been similarly blessed. The poor girl has three arms, two of the usual length and one half-size that flaps about in front of her body; but an extra arm is a better option than an extra head. The two-headed people of my acquaintance find it difficult to arrive at the most simple of decisions. I believe that I owe my responsible position within Worldwideculture to the fact that I’m a one-headed person. I may only have one eye but it is a large one in the centre of my forehead and I am therefore clear-sighted, able to make decisions easily without the distraction of an alternate self. I try to explain this to Isis.
‘Get over yourself, Ody,’ she says, popping another tab. She’s taken to calling me Ody lately, a nickname I take to be short for my name, Odysseus, but yesterday she called me Odious by mistake. A slip of the tongue.
Or is it? She likes to tease.
Because of my position as chief chronicler, I’m privileged to see authentic images n
